In the village of Soriano, where Alessandro grew up,
there were small shops called Barber & Taylor shops and they had a myriad
of instruments hanging on the walls. In between clients or when there were no
clients at all anyone could play the mandolin or guitar or cello or clarinet
and that is how he started this journey. He was self-taught with no
professional training. He bought his first mandolin at age 13. He also
discovered as a boy that in addition to being proficient on a multitude of
stringed and keyboard instruments, he had an uncanny ability to whistle. By his
early thirties, he was making a living touring Germany as a singer, pianist,
and guitarist, and he later formed a group in Rome called the Four Caravels
whose sound was modeled on the work of the Four Freshmen, and served as their
arranger as well as leader. The multi-talented Alessandroni was soon to become
one of the busier session musicians in Italy, and achieve stardom in totally unexpected
musical idiom.

During a recording session of music for an early film
Alessandroni was involved with, composer Nino Rota, who asked if anyone in the
orchestra could whistle. I was playing guitar then. When no one came forward he
said that he could try but couldn’t promise anything. But it worked and that is
how the quality of his whistle was discovered.

During the early 1960s, Alessandroni crossed paths
professionally with a slightly younger former boyhood friend, Ennio Morricone,
who, after a few years as a musician working in jazz clubs, had begun to emerge
in the field of movie music. Morricone had just scored his first Western and
was working on another, and wanted to add some new sounds to his work.
Alessandroni's guitar and his abilities as a whistler came to the fore on the
resulting score for “Pistols Don't Argue”, within the framework of a
traditional Western ballad. But that success was merely a toe in the water in
terms of their collaboration -- Morricone had another project in the pipeline,
called “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), a Western that was anything but
traditional, and it was here that Alessandroni began collaborating with him in
the making of some much more important music, and utilizing far more of his
range as a guitarist as well. With a lonely, echo-drenched whistle over a
repetitive guitar figure, with added flutes, whip-cracks, and Alessandroni's
Duane Eddy-style electric guitar coming in along with a wordless male chorus --
courtesy of Alessandroni's vocal group, now expanded to a dozen or more members
and renamed I Cantori Moderni -- the haunting title track redefined the sound
of Western movie music.

Alessandroni would go on to become a film composer in his
own right and remained one of the most prominent and influential musicians ever
to play on film scores or, through that medium, to influence popular music
around the world. Over the decades since his music was popularized in film
music, Alessandroni has worked with dozens of star performers, including
Americans such as Paul Anka, and most of Italy's top talent. He’s been noted as
one of the top 10 guitarists of ll-time in several guitar based magazines.

Alessandro was married to photographer and journalist Margaret
Courtney-Clarke. Previously he was married to sin ger Giulia De Mutis until her
death in 1984, with whom he had two children: composer Alex Alessandroni and
Cinzia Alessandroni.

About Me

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1946 I have a BA degree in American History from Cal St. Northridge. I've been researching the American West and western films since the early 1980s and visiting filming sites in Spain and the U.S.A. Elected a member of the Spaghetti Western Hall of Fame 2010.